Various multi-computing architectures are known where a plurality of processing units are coupled to form a cluster. Such architectures are used in parallel processing and also in the emerging field of blade computing.
Blade computing relies on blade servers, which are modular, single-board computers. An overview of blade computing is given in “Architectures and Infrastructure for Blade Computing”, September 2002, Sun Microsystems and “THE NEXT WAVE: BLADE SERVER COMPUTING”, Sun Microsystems.
A content load balancing blade is commercially available from Sun Microsystems, for example, the Sun Fire™ B10n. This blade provides traffic and content management functionalities. Content load balancing is achieved based on URLs, CGI scripts and cookies. Server load balancing is achieved based on server loads, response times, and weighted round-robin algorithms.
US patent application no. 20030105903 shows a web edge server, which comprises a number of blade servers. A switch and an information distribution module are provided for the purpose of balancing. The information distribution module receives an information message, performs processing on the message to determine a destination, and forwards a message toward the determined destination via an internal communications network.